Linda Leatherbarrow is a British short story writer and illustrator. Her stories have been published in her collection, Essential Kit (Maia Press 2004) and many magazines including Ambit, Cosmopolitan, Mslexia and Writing Women, and in several anthologies. They have also been broadcast on BBC Radio 4.[1]
Linda Leatherbarrow was born in Dumfries, Scotland, and brought up in England and Scotland. In her early career she created, illustrated, printed and published several limited-edition illustrated books of poems for her Little Bird Press. In 1995 she set up the Haringey Literature Festival and co-ordinated it for three years. She has won 1st Prize of the London Writers Competition three times. In 2001 she won a Bridport Prize[1] and an Asham Award.[2] In 2006 she was given an Arts Council award. Her story Ride was published in Norway by Cappelen in an anthology of British writing for students of English literature and language despite the fact that the story is a single sentence with no full stops at all and is many pages long. It was also published in the anthology Even The Ants Have Names by Diamond Twig 2002.[3]
From a review of Essential Kit: 'In this collection of varied and exquisite short stories, Linda Leatherbarrow brings together for the first time her prize-winning short prose with new and previously unpublished work. A wide-ranging, rich and surprising gallery of characters includes a nineteen-year-old girl leaving home, a talking gorilla in the swinging sixties, a shoe fetishist and a long-distance walker. The prose is lyrical, witty and uplifting, moving and always pertinent - proof that the short story is the perfect literary form for contemporary urban life. These stories display a seriously fresh original talent and are essential reading for short-story lovers everywhere.'[4]
Books
Prizes and Awards
Contributions to Anthologies
Journals